Problems arose Friday evening after the CSAC learned that funding had not been secured to pay the athletes who were to compete on the card.

“At the eleventh hour, the commission was informed there were insufficient funds to pay the fighters,” CSAC executive director Armando Garcia told Sherdog.com. “In the end, we had to cancel the event.”

Valor Fighting, the promotion behind WCO, made several last-minute efforts to save the event, but CSAC had already made the decision to close the event down.

CSAC’s Armando Garcia told Sherdog that he contacted h the San Diego Sports Arena box-office and that sales for the event were very low.

Despite the cancellation, fighters will receive 20% of their promised purses from the promotor due to CSAC policy. The deadline for payment is January 18.

I think they did. You don’t go through all that trouble without wanting the event to go off. I just think they didn’t have all the money up front and assumed they’d get it from the ticket sales because of all the big names they booked. MMA doesn’t work that way. National draws do not work on local shows.

Some local MMA promoters who have a little bit of cash to burn think it’s like pro wrestling, where if you get a few notable names that people will come out and pay to see it.You need to get as many local schools represented on a local show as possible in order to make it work.

Casual fans do not support local MMA, which is a shame. They’ll watch taped matches of Unleashed but won’t pay to see guys fight in their own backyard.

My Company (RingSideJunkie TV) was contacted by the WCO to put this event via PPV. We were never even contacted about the cancellation by the WCO, and in fact I had to find out from friends (Goze of Tagg Radio) and Chris of the Lights Out Show that the event was up in the air.

We are refunding everyone that bought the PPV online, and are very sad that it turned out this way. Once again, we were NEVER contacted by the WCO about this event going sour, and had to find out on our own about the situation.

We’ll have an Official Press Release on our thoughts of the situation at RingSideJunkie.com in an hour or so.

Ringsidejunkie.com seems to be manning up and taking care of their fans. Good for them not screwing people around.

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WCO “THE RETURN” PPV EVENT CANCELLED

Ringside Junkie Fans,

We regretfully announce that the pay-per-view WCO event The Return scheduled for January 12, 2008 has been cancelled. The event, set to take place in San Diego, California was cancelled by the California State Athletic Commission due to funding issues on behalf of WCO/Valor Fighting.

RingsideJunkie.com was prepared to show the event live, but now there is no event to broadcast. Ringside Junkie’s Event Terms and Conditions state “There are no refunds written or implied.” However, as a gesture to our fans, FULL REFUNDS will be issued for this event. Please allow up to 30 days to receive your refund because of the high number of sales that must now be reprocessed and refunded. There is no need to contact us about your purchase, however we at RingSideJunkie TV always love to hear from the fans. We have every confirmed ticket and access code and will be able to issue refunds appropriately and in a timely manner.

We sincerely apologize for this even though it was completely out of our control. We hope that we can all move forward from this as we work diligently to bring you, the fans, future events. Keep coming back to ringsidejunkie.com to catch our current shows as well as upcoming shows, like “A Day in the Life of a Pro Fighter.”

Refunds in this case are considered a gesture? Wow. Unless Ringside Junkie changes their policy to guarantee refunds in the event of a cancellation, I’ll never order a PPV from them.

It’s also ridiculous that the WCO didn’t even have the courtesy to let a business partner in on the problems.

I’m just thankful the commission was on top of things and so nobody had to throw or take a punch for free. It sucks that the fighters are only getting 20% considering many of them trained hard to be ready to fight, but it’s better that they don’t fight if there’s a chance they aren’t going to get paid. Hopefully other promotions will reach out and put some of the fighters booked for last night’s show on their cards. February is going to be a busy month and I’m sure there are some slots still open.

The WCO didn’t do much media for this event, which is crazy considering they had so many big name fighters. I think David Loiseau did a few interviews and I think one of their executives was on Inside MMA and Jordan Breen’s show. Riggs was on Whoop Ass Radio too.

But other than that, nothing. I didn’t get a single e-mail from a PR person. No press releases. Nothing. Yahoo! and ProElite.com are both located in LA. I wonder if they tried hitting up either site? I wonder if other blogs and websites were contacted by the WCO about getting some press?

The most disturbing part of the story that I heard is that the WCO promoter, who was not the official promoter for the show, tried to convince some of the fighters to sign new contracts for sums as low as $100 with promises of payment in the future. He hoped that cheaping out with the official purses would allow the fights to go on. Fortunately, he was denied a promoter’s license.

You know something is shady when the promoter is not the official promoter, instead relying on someone else (in this case valor) to submit official paperwork.

Unfortunately, I called that this was going to be cancelled. I said to myself, there are too many big names on this card, it’s a promotion I’ve never heard from, and I hadn’t seen any advertising for it at all and I live in SD. I waited until Friday night to buy my tkts and I was still unsure it was really going to go forward. Unlike usual, I hated to see my prediction come true.

[…] entering this fight with a back injury would have to be the need for a decent paycheck after the WCO debacle which left him with only 20% of what he would have earned for fighting on that show. All in all […]